Inter-laboratory validation of the serial dilution culture—most probable number method for enumerating viable phytoplankton
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The most probable number (MPN) assay is used to enumerate viable phytoplankton in the 10–50 μm size range for Type Approval of ballast water management systems. However, its validation has been questioned by the United States Coast Guard, which does not accept it as an alternative to its required method. To address key elements of method validation, three research laboratories used the same experimental protocols to enumerate viable organisms from uniformly viable and heat-killed cultures of three species of phytoplankton. Statistical analysis of the ratio of MPN estimates of viable organisms to measurements from flow cytometry was consistent with predictions based on perfect adherence to the method’s assumptions. These include reliable detection of all viable organisms and no false-positive results. The validation confirmed established estimates of the MPN method’s precision and demonstrated reproducibility, having been transferred to and implemented by two of the laboratories for the first time.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".